I’m a 45 year old business owner who also has focussed on diversifying my income streams. I have a short term vacation rental in Florida that I bought for $390k in 2012 and net rental income for the last three years has been growing steadily. 2015 I am at $70k gross right now but should end up at $80-85k with net around $45k plus we use the place about 35 nights a year.

Building a website still remains a viable way of earning passive income online despite it being such a competitive venture. Since the internet is saturated with blogs, an entertaining website featuring quizzes or games is a good alternate. Such websites are not too difficult to make and they are easy to promote on social media. They can attract visitors, who will spend a significant amount of time on the site, in droves. Once a site starts recording several thousand visits each day, use the Google AdSense system to start earning revenue through advertising while you relax.

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Let’s use Jim from our personal finance example. Jim’s furniture manufacturer builds tables and has several large pieces of equipment in the sawmill used to re-saw logs and boards down to the finished dimensions. The sawmill has net operating revenues of $100,000 for year. The saws in the mill cost Jim a total of $500,000 and he is currently earning a return of 10% in his wholesale table business. Thus, he sets a minimum required return of 10 percent.
The second form of residual income, passive income, is often a vital part of wealth creation. There are only so many hours in each day, and when a person trades hours for dollars, there is a maximum amount of income that person can earn. For instance, if a person earns a specific amount each hour, there is a limit to how many hours are available to work. Once they reach that maximum amount of time, they cannot earn more money.
If you have a spare bedroom, you can find a roommate or list the space on AirBnB for travelers. Having a roommate is the more passive of the two, as being an Airbnb host will require more work in the form of turning over the room between stays. This is a super painless way to earn $500 to $1,000 a month without much effort – you may even be able to cover your mortgage payment with this extra income!
Passive income differs from earned income and portfolio income in a variety of ways. Passive income is generally defined as a stream of income earned with little effort, and it is referred to as progressive passive income when there is little effort needed from the individual receiving the passive income in order to grow the stream of income. Examples of passive income include rental income and any business activities in which the earner does not materially participate during the year.
Many people in the investment world also define residual income as revenue stemming from a passive source. This revenue is created without a direct input of effort or time. The investment itself creates addition revenues without having to be managed. Some examples include royalties, dividends, interest, and rent. Take a dividend stock for example. Once the money is invested once, it will keep producing a dividend every year without having to input additional time or resources. This concept is the Holy Grail for most investors.
The most underrated thing and the BEST part to me is; that hard earned traffic is given to you for FREE, people already know about Amazon, but people don't know about your website/blog/etc. There's easier ways to get more exposure with your product. You can rank your product on page 1 pretty easy and doing so will make your product viewed by hundreds of thousands of purchase ready customers. I started with little experience and I'm pulling it off, I'm sure you can do this too. If your interested I can show you how to start an Amazon business, and what I personally do to grow it. https://youtu.be/YVmbeyGObAk

​Udemy is an online platform that lets its user take video courses on a wide array of subjects. Instead of being a consumer on Udemy you can instead be a producer, create your own video course, and allow users to purchase it. This is a fantastic option if you are highly knowledgeable in a specific subject matter. This can also be a great way to turn traditional tutoring into a passive income stream!

And real estate does more than just track inflation – it throws off income (which is important to some people and useful to most). And while your underlying asset is appreciating, the income also grows as rents increase over time. And if you make smart and well-timed purchases, both rents and asset values can increase at well above the rate of inflation.
In order to build an audience, you need to have a platform. You need to have something worth following and sharing; something that’s valuable to others. And that, of course, takes time. That’s not to say you can’t build a huge audience in a short amount of time. But as much as we hear about the people who’ve succeeding at doing this, we don’t hear about the millions of others who are struggling every day to get just a few more fans and followers.
Mr Raman, age 32, works for a bank as a senior manager. He earns Rs 50,000 per month take-home salary. His wife works as a school teacher earning Rs 15,000 per month. Raman had, earlier in his career, sold life insurance policies as an agent earning roughly Rs 50,000 per annum (Rs 4200 per month) as renewal commission every year from those policies sold. Raman has a flat of his own plus a small investment property in neighbouring suburb giving him Rs 15,000 p.m. rent. Raman has a decent small savings portfolio giving him an interest of Rs 5,000 per month. Raman believes he will increase his savings income from Rs 5000 to 15,000 in 5 years time as he plans to save all of his annual bonus (Rs 1.5 lacs per annum) every year.
Teachable and Udemy are two of many, but these are the most prevalent, and they’re both intuitive and user-friendly. With Teachable, you have more control over your pricing and the look and feel of your course, but you don’t get a built-in audience. Instead you have to do all the marketing yourself. Udemy has a built-in base of students, but you don’t have as much control and they take more of your revenue.
​If you pay your bills with a credit card make sure it offers cash back rewards. You can let your rewards accrue for a while and possibly put the easy money you earned toward another passive income venture! (Be sure that the card you select doesn’t have an annual fee or you might be cancelling out your rewards). Check out this list of the best Cashback Rewards Cards.

Do your due diligence and sign up to other relevant courses that you might find on that site or any other site out there. Go through those courses and build a curriculum that makes sense for your own course. Ensure that you take the time to do this the right way and that you don’t just try to slap something together. Remember, this is years and years worth of potential passive income here, so invest the right amount of time into this.

Vanguard: Vanguard has a minimum of $50,000 and a fee of 0.3%. Rebalancing is done automatically once every quarter and tax loss harvesting is done on a client-by-client basis. We included Vanguard because clients who invest between $50,000-$500,000 have access to a team of financial advisors. Those with accounts over $500,000 will have a dedicated advisor.
You need to decide which machines you want to run, get the necessary licenses to operate them (you're selling items so you need to get sales licenses and whatnot from your state), buy the machines and a truck for the items in the machines, find a supplier of the products, and then finally you can secure locations. Finally, you need to service them periodically or hire someone to service them.
Highly-paid professionals (like doctors) should definitely be looking into multiple streams of income. In fact, more than anyone, we are in the best position to accelerate our growth towards financial freedom. We’re able to earn the necessary capital and immediately throw that money into creating additional streams very quickly. We just have to be strategic about it. Keep your expenses in check, and be disciplined about moving your earned income from your day jobs and straight into the money-making machines. There is a balance to be had here. You just have to figure out exactly where it is for you.
A business thrives or fails depending on its marketing and system for generating leads. You need leads to make sales. No audience or exposure means you won’t get fresh faces checking out what your business does. Too many entrepreneurs spend all their time on the “busy work” and not enough on audience building. There are some great ways to build an audience and generate new leads:
Hello from the UK! Fundrise and Wealthfront are only available to US residents it seems :(. Any other readers from the UK here? The only thing I have managed to do from Sam’s list is getting a fixed rate bond (CBS is having a 5-year fixed rate at 2.01% – not great but the best I could find ). Don’t know if the FIRE movement will ever take off here but would love to trade tips/ideas on how to reach FI and have the freedom to consider alternative rythms to living.
Amazing article Jim. Jammed packed with great information and inspiration for a finance blogger looking to find ways to diversify income streams. Building up your capital, achieved through saving more than you earn as you described, will open doors to a lot of activities in the future. The name of the game is putting your savings to work to turn expenses and idle cash into income producing assets. It isn’t easy when you are starting from $0, but through discipline and time you will eventually be able to achieve your goals and begin using the methods you described to diversify your income streams.
Investing in rental properties: Another form of real estate investment, rental investments (i.e. becoming a landlord) could steer you down the passive income path of steady monthly rent checks that you can use to pay off a mortgage loan on the rental property. After the mortgage is paid off, those monthly checks go right into your bank account -- potentially for years to come.
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I have been using,”multiple streams of income,” as my mantra during this rough patch. Being an interior designer easily translates into designing other things as well. I have been designing jewelry that is customized in price and style for different stores. I also opened an Etsy shop for my jewelry and for vintage items that I find in my treasure hunting for clients.I am bringing in an extra $1500-$3000 a month, and I am having fun! My first passion is always going to be interior design, and I am thankful for the clients I have!

Within six months of selling, however, I had reinvested the proceeds from the home sale and brought total passive income for 2018 back up to an estimated $203,724. Without a clear plan for reinvesting the proceeds, I’m not sure I would have sold the house since I’m bullish on the SF housing market long term. However, because I did have a plan and the challenges of raising a newborn and dealing with rowdy tenants left me feeling a bit stretched, I decided to simplify and sell.

Our favorite platform for this is RealtyMogul because you get the flexibility to invest as little as $1,000, but can also participate in REITs and private placements – typically not offered to the public. Investors can fund real estate loans to gain passive income or buy an equity share in a property for potential appreciation. Their platform is open to both accredited and non-accredited investors.
If you have specialized knowledge in a certain topic, you can put together an online course to teach others. For example, if you have experience in real estate investing, you can create an online course “Real Estate Investing 101”. The benefit of an online course is that once you create the course material, you can sell it to as many people as you want.
Investing in bonds: Similarly, bonds are an attractive way to engage in passive income. Over a recent 45-year period, bonds funds, as measured by Vanguard Funds, returned 7.1%. Of course, there's no guarantee that investments in stocks or bonds will always work out well, investing in them is by far the surest way to generate money through passive income.
The thing is, I’m not talking about buying brick-and-mortar buildings. I tried that many years ago with my father-in-law, and with devastating results. We tried to buy a duplex once, and the deal fell apart after we realized we weren’t really prepared for the purchase. I secretly wanted to become a landlord, but at the same time, I knew it wasn’t for me.

In short, you need a blog to drive traffic to great content that will then capture email subscribers along the way. To do that, you’ll also need to create some type of free offer that you can give away. Whether it’s a report or an ebook or something else, you need to come up with something that will add value to the lives of others if you want to capture those all-important email addresses.

Still, you can expect to make a few hundred dollars to a few thousands dollars per month with one ebook depending on how good it is. The more value that you can add through that ebook, the more likely it’s going to be successful. Focus on value here and not on how to do the least amount of work for the greatest return if you actually want to succeed with this.
I’ve obviously been experimenting with this one. While this blog may not be exactly breaking records for income, it does bring in money, and hopefully, more as time goes by. There are plenty of full-time bloggers out there supporting families on nothing but website advertising income. I know several bloggers making $1000-3000 a month from their blog.
Airbnb is a concept that has only been around for a few years, but it has exploded around the globe. Airbnb allows people to travel all around the world and to stay in accommodations that are a lot less expensive than traditional hotels. They do this by staying with participating Airbnb members who rent out part of their homes to travelers. By participating in Airbnb, you can use your residence to accommodate guests and earn extra money just for renting out space in your home.
Department C has earned $142.5 million residual income as compared to $40 million earned by department P. Residual income allows us to compare the dollar amount of residual income earned by different departments. Since the residual income in both cases is positive, we conclude that both have met the minimum return requirements. However, with residual income is not easy to compare performance.

[we may view the] economic organization as a system of prize relations. Seen in the large, free enterprise is an organization of production and distribution in which individuals or family units get their real income, their "living," by selling productive power for money to "business units" or "enterprises", and buying with the money income thus obtained the direct goods and services which they consume. This view, it will be remembered, ignores for the sake of simplicity the fact that an appreciable fraction of the productive power in use at any time is not really employed in satisfying current wants but to make provision for increased want-satisfaction in the future; it treats society as it would be, or would tend to become, with progress absent, or in a “static” state.[13]

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